“It didn’t look like any squid I had seen, until we started getting close and the animal started rotating around.”

Its manner of swimming resembled a nautilus, and its colouring resembled that of a vampire squid (neither a vampire, nor actually a squid), but the researchers believe it may be a mysterious squid called Discoteuthis discus, which is only known from dead, incomplete specimens.

However, because the researchers didn’t collect the squid, for now they only have the footage. They don’t know what the squid eats, or how it gets its food; or the reason for its really weird posture – whether it was camouflage, a sign of illness, a way to optimise food collection of debris falling through the ocean, or something else.

Other squids have been observed in a similar posture, but this squid was different.

“This one was real extreme,” Vecchione said. “A couple of the arms were folded right flat on the back, and a couple were folded underneath, and a couple were sticking out to the side.”

Future dives may reveal more information about its behaviour and characteristics and help identify the squid – whether it’s a species already known to science behaving really oddly, or something completely new.